by Rachel Lee
A snort escaped Grant, but Trish wasn’t laughing. None of it felt laughable. “So he’s talking?”
“He’s singing. You may not have meant to hit him there, but good job!”
She was discharged after only a couple of hours. When they were in the patrol car, Grant instructed the deputy to take them to the motel.
“But I want to go home,” Trish said.
“No. You don’t. Not until I get someone in there to clean up the mess and make repairs.”
Oh, God. Oh, God. She felt another tremor pass through her. “Tad…”
“Tad’s at the vet’s. He’s okay, but he must have been drugged.”
She looked at him, feeling the breath sucked out of her. “That means…that means…”
“That the guy got into your house when you drove me to the motel. Very likely. How he got past those cops I don’t know.”
“Maybe they didn’t feel they had to watch as closely when I was out.”
“Maybe. We’ll find out. We’ll figure out everything.”
With that, she sighed and let him pull her head onto his shoulder. She couldn’t sort through all this now. No way. It was going to take time. For now she was just going to let herself enjoy the comfort of Grant’s nearness. She had years ahead of her to deal with what had happened tonight, what she had done tonight.
At the motel he tucked her under the covers to keep her warm, since she was still in her flannel nightshirt. He lay on top of the covers fully clothed and drew her into the circle of his strength, holding her close.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me.”
“But you saved my life.”
His answer was simple. “You saved mine.”
“You would have gotten that safety off…”
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
“Oh.” Hazily, she realized he was talking about the whole thing. His grief, his guilt. He had atoned. That made her feel better and she snuggled closer, loving the smell of him, the softness of his flannel shirt, the power she could feel in his chest.
“But if you want to talk about tonight…” He squeezed her. “I think I saw a lioness protecting her pride. But for you, he’d probably have managed to shoot me.”
“I wasn’t going to let him do that.”
“No kidding. You erupted out of that closet like a Valkyrie.”
“I’m not exactly proud of what I did.”
“I understand. Sometimes, though, we have to do things we’d never want to do under ordinary circumstances. There was a killer in your bedroom and he’d already shot at you. You don’t have to feel good about what you did, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up, either.”
“No….” Oddly, her eyes were growing heavy.
“Sleep now,” he said quietly. “You need some rest. I’ll be right here.”
And she did exactly that.
She awoke with a start to the brilliant light of morning. It took a full half minute for her to realize where she was and that there was no longer any reason to be afraid. She heard Grant speaking and turned to see him on the telephone, talking quietly. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled and waved.
She waited patiently while he talked, not paying attention to what he said, just glad to look at him and be grateful that he hadn’t vanished along with the nightmare.
He hung up and crossed to sit on the bed beside her. Reaching out, he first stroked her tousled hair, then clasped her hand. “Do you want the update?”
“Sure.” She clung to his fingers, wanting never to let go.
“The two deputies who were guarding you are going to be okay. Battered and a little broken, but otherwise good. How he got past them when you drove me back here…” He shrugged. “Lori thinks it was because they simply weren’t being attentive enough, having been told the attack would come between midnight and two. As she said, they were watching from inside the neighboring house at that point, and it would have been easier for him to slip by.”
Trish nodded. “I don’t blame them. I’m just glad they’re going to be okay.”
Grant nodded agreement. “Gage is sending one of his deputies over to get you some clothes, so you won’t be trapped in my clutches wearing only your nightgown forever.”
“I like being trapped in your clutches.”
A smile softened his face. “I’m thrilled to hear it. Second item—I have someone coming in today to clean up your house. The mess will be gone by this evening, but the repairs won’t likely be done until tomorrow.”
“I can deal with a broken closet door.”
“It’s more than broken. Splinters everywhere. But regardless, you also need a new front door lock. Closet door and front door tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.”
“Tad is doing well. The guy may be a hit man, but he doesn’t hurt animals. So your dog will be back in your arms as soon as we get over there. If you still want him?” He seemed almost hesitant. “I did force him on you.”
“I’m glad you did. I’d keep him if for no other reason, but actually I’m getting very fond of him.”
His smile deepened. “And as soon as we get your clothes, we’re wanted over at the sheriff’s department.”
At that she closed her eyes and sighed heavily. “I know I have to, but I don’t want to.” Right now she didn’t want to relive the horrible night or the events leading up to it. She wanted to pretend it had never happened.
Well, except for meeting Grant. That opened her eyes again. She looked at him, wondering if he was going to turn into another regret, but she didn’t want to ask. Didn’t dare to ask.
“I know,” he said when she remained silent, “that I promised I’d be here with you all night. But I have a confession to make.”
Her heart jumped uneasily.
“I trotted across to the truck stop to get us something to eat. It’s just some rolls, but I didn’t want anything that would spoil before you awoke.”
“Coffee?” she asked hopefully.
“You bet.”
With that, she discovered that she had some willpower left, some energy, though not much, and a suddenly huge appetite. She pushed herself up against the pillows and headboard and banished all unhappy thoughts, determined to keep them tucked away until she had to deal with them later during questioning.
She even managed a smile. “Bring it on, please. I’m hungry.”
But instead of going to get the food, he bent over her and kissed her long and deep. Within seconds she was clinging to his broad shoulders and he was slipping his arms beneath her. The heat she felt seemed to burn everything else away.
Then he pulled back with a groan. “Not now,” he said hoarsely. “Not now. The deputy will be here any minute.” He dropped a quick kiss on her nose, then with an obvious reluctance that put a bandage over at least one of her fears, he rose to get the coffee and the rolls.
Their conversation while they ate rambled aimlessly, avoiding touchy subjects entirely. He told her about his friends. She told him about hers. They even spoke briefly about their parents and discovered they were both orphans now.
It was a conversation so ordinary that Trish felt herself becoming steadily tethered in the real world again, shaking free of the surreal events of the past days.
By the time Deputy Sarah Ironheart arrived with a suitcase full of clothes, Trish had even started believing that life could be ordinary again.
And that seemed like the most amazingly beautiful thing in the world.
The meeting at the sheriff’s office was awful. Grant wasn’t allowed to come with her into the interrogation room where four federal agents waited for her with tape recorders, notepads and not-quite-friendly looks. The only comfort she had was Gage, who had dragged his office chair in so he could ease his habitual pain by sitting.
And it was Gage who drew the lines. “Okay,” he said after introducing everyone, “I want some understandings before we proceed.”
All of the agents frowned at
him. One spoke. “You know we don’t have to agree to that.”
“No,” Gage said amiably, “you don’t. But if you don’t, Ms. Devlin is going to get lawyered up before you ask a single question. And if she gets lawyered up, it’s going to be with one of the country’s most famous attorneys who happens to live not too far from here and is a personal friend of mine.”
The agents exchanged looks, then the one who had spoken—Tom Feeney, if Trish had them all sorted correctly—said, “Look, Sheriff, this is an issue of national security of the highest importance. We need Ms. Devlin’s full cooperation to find out what happened.”
“Ms. Devlin actually knows very little,” Gage replied, still amiable. “Most of it’s in that envelope I gave you.”
“Then what concerns you?”
“That you might try to imply something that just ain’t so.” Gage smiled, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. “Kindly keep in mind that I used to be DEA. I know how interrogations can run. This is not an interrogation, and certainly not an interrogation of a hostile witness. Got it?”
Trish was becoming increasingly nervous by the second. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Gage said. “Which is my point, and the point we’re going to get clear before we go any further. And the same rules will hold for the questioning of Mr. Wolfe.”
“Now wait—”
“No, you wait. You wouldn’t have even learned of this without these two. So I want absolutely no suggestion that either of them have done anything except help uncover a crime. Clear?”
One of the other men spoke. “We can take them to our office for questioning. Or to the U.S. Attorney’s office.”
Trish’s heart slammed.
“No,” said Feeney. “No. We’re not going that route. There’s absolutely no evidence that this woman or Mr. Wolfe engaged in any crime.”
“Exactly,” Gage said. “Which is why you’re going to question them as witnesses to help your case, not as coconspirators even if you have other questions.”
Trish waited, her heart in her throat, realizing that Gage was trying to make certain that no one questioned how she had discovered what kind of chips were stolen. So that no one even suggested that she or Grant or anyone else had gone to places they shouldn’t have gone.
She managed a grateful look at Gage, realizing he was saving them.
Feeney nodded. “The point of this is to catch the bad guys, not implicate the people who tried to stop this.”
“Then we’re agreed,” Gage said. He leaned forward, wincing a little. “So we’ll start at the basics. Ms. Devlin noticed an inventory discrepancy and reported it to her CFO. She became concerned because she is aware that the plant produces classified chips. She became further concerned when her boyfriend, Grant Wolfe, immediately saw the threat inherent in her discovery if the missing chips were highly classified.”
Feeney nodded. “I can go with that.”
“It’s true!” The words burst out of Trish. “It was his scientific background that gave me enough information to realize how dangerous this might be. And then when I found myself locked out of my work account…” She trailed off.
Gage spoke. “She promptly reported it to me and I called you. And once I called you, I knew that if what she suspected was true, she might be in serious danger.”
After that things went smoothly. An hour later she was out of there. Grant was next and she waited impatiently outside. Finally he emerged, looking unruffled and completely calm. Gage followed him.
She looked up. “Is it over?”
Gage sat beside her on a plastic chair while Grant squatted in front of her and took her hands. “Mostly,” he said. “Mostly. What’s left is nothing to worry about.”
“Most definitely not,” Gage said. “You’ll probably have to make a statement under oath about how you discovered and reported the discrepancy, and what happened after that. Just what you said in there. And you’ll probably have to testify at trial to exactly the same information.”
She nodded. “I can do that.”
“So in that sense, it’s over,” Grant said, squeezing her hands. Then he grimaced and flopped into the chair on the other side of Trish. He leaned forward and looked at Gage. “We make some pair, you and I.”
Gage shook his head and laughed. “The halt and the lame, that’s us.” He turned his attention to Trish. “Your CFO was named by the hit man. They’ll probably be chasing connections for months to find out how many people were involved and where those chips might have gone. But one thing I’m certain of now.”
“What’s that?”
“You did the right thing and now you’re safe. Your testimony won’t even be critical at a trial, thanks to the hit man. Nothing more to worry about, Trish.”
Nothing? she wondered as she rode back to the motel with Grant in the car he had rented. Nothing?
Just little stuff like learning to live with herself again and dealing with the fact that she’d shot a man and had wanted to kill him, and probably watching Grant walk off into the sunset—literally since his home was in California.
Once back in the room, however, a lot of that melted away as he drew her down onto the bed with him and hugged her, just hugged her. She didn’t want to lose him. She couldn’t bear that thought.
But outspoken though she usually was, there were questions she couldn’t force past her lips. They simply wouldn’t emerge.
After a bit he was the one who broke the silence. “I talked to Dex and Jerry while you were in with the cops.”
Her heart squeezed. “I bet they can’t wait for you to come back.”
“Apparently.”
“So when will you go?” It hurt to even ask.
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
She tilted her face, trying to read his expression. He looked somber, she thought, and that couldn’t possibly mean anything good.
“I like this town,” he said. “I like the people I’ve met. I’m even getting used to Maude. And without Mahoney last night, I never would have gotten to your place as quickly as I did. The man hardly knows me from Adam, but he gave me the keys to his Harley. So I like this place and the people.”
“Well, we have our share of prunes, if you know what I mean.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Everywhere does. But people here seem to be focused differently. And I like it. So here’s the thing—I want to come back.”
So he was leaving. And wanting to come back didn’t exactly sound like a promise. “I hope you do.” And she hoped the tightening in her throat wasn’t audible.
“The thing is, I’m going to need at least a couple of months back in California. To catch up on what’s been going on with the business and the research. And to get my hip worked on some more. I shouldn’t have let it go this long.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she agreed, this time with her whole heart. “You were punishing yourself, weren’t you?”
“You know me too well. So, anyway, I’m going to need a couple of months, maybe a little longer before I can come back.”
She managed a nod. Now her heart was climbing into her throat.
“But I don’t want to leave you.”
She caught her breath, and things inside her began to unfurl with wonder. “Grant?”
He gave a little shake of his head. “I’m doing a lousy job of this, so let me just blurt it all out, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I want you to come with me. I want us to get to know each other better, and then I want to come back here with you. I can telecommute with only a few trips to California each year. Can you handle that?”
A smile was beginning to grow on her face. “I think so.”
He blew out a short breath, as if releasing tension of some kind, then came another rush of words. “I’m going to marry you. I know it. But I want you to be sure, too. I’m already in love with you. I want you to be in love with me.”
She was smil
ing ear to ear now, and a tear of happiness slipped free. “I think I’m already there. How can you be so sure? Did you have another vision?”
He gave a little shrug. “Well, I did see a little boy with your gorgeous eyes.”
Her heart soared then, and her future opened up at last into a wonderful place she thought she’d never find. She tightened her arms around him and said simply, “I love you, Grant Wolfe.”
He smiled, a smile like the sun rising on a dreary day. “I love you, too, Trish Devlin.”
Fate? Destiny? Or just a random probability?
They neither knew nor cared.
Love was enough.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4834-6
THE MAN FROM NOWHERE
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Civil Brown
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